Conspiracy worldviews rest on three design principles excluding randomness

Evidence

Nothing happens by accident. Conspiracy implies a world based on intentionality, from which accident and coincidence have been removed. Anything that happens occurs because it has been willed. … Nothing is as it seems. Appearances are deceptive, because conspirators wish to deceive in order to disguise their identities or their activities. Thus the appearance of innocence is deemed to be no guarantee that an individual or group is benign. … Everything is connected. Because the conspiracists’ world has no room for accident, pattern is believed to be everywhere, albeit hidden from plain view. Hence the conspiracy theorist must engage in a constant process of linkage and correlation in order to map the hidden connections. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 74

A conspiracist worldview implies a universe governed by design rather than by randomness. The emphasis on design manifests itself in three principles found in virtually every conspiracy theory: … Nothing is as it seems. Appearances are deceptive, because conspirators wish to deceive in order to disguise their identities or their activities. Thus the appearance of innocence is deemed to be no guarantee that an individual or group is benign. … Everything is connected. Because the conspiracists’ world has no room for accident, pattern is believed to be everywhere, albeit hidden from plain view. Hence the conspiracy theorist must engage in a constant process of linkage and correlation in order to map the hidden connections. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: The three structural principles — nothing happens by accident, appearances deceive, everything connects — that define any conspiracy worldview
• XREF: The ‘everything is connected’ principle resonates with pattern-seeking cognition and the reader’s prior work on belief formation — connects to: Conspiracy theories become unfalsifiable by dismissing skeptic evidence as planted; Conspiracy theories evolve toward complex multi-organization superconspiracies — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 349; The ‘everything is connected’ principle turns ordinary business links into conspiracy architecture — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 842 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 74; Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 73

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy functions as an alternative epistemology when interpretation has no ground truth #expands (0.85) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 105
• Numerological reasoning can connect any event to a favored conspiracy conclusion #exemplifies (0.80) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 774
• For conspiracy believers, the conspiracy is an axiom, not a conclusion #qualifies (0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 812
• Alternate evil explanations work best when they are thinglike and palpable #expands (0.72)